Never Thirst Again (John 4)

In Sermons, The Whole Story, Year 2024 by harvest.admin

Resource by Eric Weiner

One of the things I love about the gospels is that they’re filled with stories of Jesus interacting with all kinds of people. Religious leaders. Social outcasts. Close friends. Tax collectors. Men and women. Young and old. Rich and poor. 

Jesus is a larger-than-life figure by any standard, but he’s not so far removed from the realities of a sin-filled world that he can’t relate to us. As Pastor Peter shared last week, Jesus knows what it’s like to be tempted in every way as we are. And he comes to meet us in the messiness of it all. 

When you read Jesus’s interactions with people, these stories are from 2,000 years ago, but they read like they could be happening today. 

What do you think an encounter with Jesus would look like today? What if you saw him as he came into the building? Or you were behind him at the snack tables after service – would you even try to say something to him? Would you want to be seen by him?

What if the reason why you’re here this morning is because God wants to meet with you? Jesus has something he wants to say to you. 

That’s why Jesus met with the Samaritan woman. He was seeking people to worship him in spirit and truth. That’s why he came to her. That’s what he wants for you. 

[1] Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 

These opening verses seem to tell us that Jesus’s influence is growing as John’s is decreasing and the religious leaders, who have been keeping their eyes on the Judean countryside, aren’t too excited about any of it. Their concerns will only get bigger from here, but let’s not mistake their displeasure as a threat that scares Jesus away. 

Jesus didn’t do anything out of fear. But he also didn’t come from heaven to earth just to hang out in Judea. Worshipping the Lord won’t be confined to one place. So, Jesus and the disciples head north to Galilee. 

[4] – And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.)

Alright, John just laid out some important context that will help set up the rest of the story. So let’s spend some time unpacking it.

First, Jews and Samaritans don’t get along. They had a long-standing history of disagreement on pretty much every level – racially, religiously, politically. All the things that would cause fights at your family gatherings they disagreed about. 

Jews thought Samaritans were racially tainted because they had intermarried with Gentiles.

Jews thought Samaritans were religious heretics because they rejected whole books of the Bible and built a rival temple for worship. 

In the Jewish faith, ritual purity was an important part of your relationship with God. Jews considered Samaritans ritually unclean, so it wasn’t uncommon for Jews to go out of their way to avoid them. These were not minor disagreements.

Second, there’s more than one way to get to Galilee. A quick Google search will tell you there’s more than one way to get from Judea to Galilee, and they don’t all require you to pass through Samaria. It’s the fastest way. But not necessarily the preferred way.

But the reason why Jesus had to go through Samaria is because he wanted to see this woman. Jesus had to travel through Sychar because he knew that she would be at that well at that time. 

Just like he’s come to meet with you this morning because he’s still seeking people to worship him.

Third, Jesus got there first, and by the time this woman showed up Jesus was alone. [v.8] – The disciples had gone into the city to buy some food. Now that you know some of the cultural dynamics, imagine how intimidated this woman would have been to see a whole party of Jewish people at the well. 

Jesus didn’t want to turn her away. He wanted to take away any barrier that might keep her from opening up to him.

Fourth, Sychar is the capital of Samaria. It’s right in the middle of Israel, and Jacob’s well is right by Mt. Gerizim, the place where Samaritans built their rival temple. The question of worship would have been as prominent in the setting as the call to prayer you hear daily throughout KL. 

Fifth, a tired Jesus sat beside the well. The way Jesus positions himself makes an encounter with him unavoidable. You could not come to this well without interacting with Jesus. That’s how he wanted it. 

Sixth, it was the sixth hour. It was noon time. Typically, women would gather at the well in the morning or the evening when it’s cooler. Drawing well water is labor-intensive. Not something you want to do in the heat of the day. 

So, here you have a woman who’s not even socially accepted among Samaritans. The fact that she comes in the heat of the day tells you she doesn’t want to be seen. Manual labor in the heat of the day is better to her than social harassment at any other time.

She doesn’t want to be seen. Do you know what I mean? Last year, I had an interaction with a local moving company where the driver was trying to upcharge me for a service I didn’t ask for and he didn’t provide. It was one of those culturally fatiguing moments. It felt like a lose-lose situation because I thought either this guy was trying to take advantage of me for being a foreigner or I was cheating him out on the money owed. It was awful.

But you know what made it even worse? It was happening right outside the building I live in. So as I’m having this dispute, people from the church are literally walking by saying, “Hey, Pastor Eric.” Of all the days. 

This woman didn’t want to be seen. But as she comes to the well, there’s a Jewish man who’s made himself unavoidable. She can’t turn around and come back later. She doesn’t have a modern-day water system in her home. She’s thirsty. She needs water. 

And Jesus is so intentional. He gets there first. He initiates the conversation. He asks her for a drink. She could have never asked him that. 

But Jesus wants to draw her out because he wants to give her living water. He wants her to come to him. He’s seeking people to worship him. 

Let me make four observations from their conversation. 

1. Jesus is willing to push through any barrier to come to you.

Jesus is the initiator here. He’s the one with all the status. All the privilege. And yet from the very start, he signals to her that he’s willing to lay it all aside for her. He says give me a drink. And it totally surprises her. 

[9] – The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 

In her mind, this is culturally inappropriate. Why would you, a Jewish man, want to disadvantage yourself by mixing company with me, a Samaritan woman? We both know that’s not a good choice for you. 

But there’s always more underneath the surface of those kinds of statements, isn’t there? There’s cultural stuff, yes, but there’s also a history of sin. It’s not something she’d say out loud, but she knows it – I’m unclean. 

Plenty of people have rejected the invitation to come to God because they thought, “Do you know how sinful I am? God won’t accept me. You don’t understand what I’ve done. You don’t even know me.” 

But Jesus says to such a person, “Madam, the problem is not that I don’t know you. The problem is that you don’t know me.” 

People who follow Jesus don’t minimize sin. We don’t write off our sin as if it doesn’t separate us from God. But true worshipers of Jesus don’t despair over how great their sin is. They’ve learned to rejoice in how gracious their God is and how mighty he is to overcome their sin. 

At the start of the conversation, this woman has no idea who Jesus is or what he’s talking about. He asks her for a drink and she says that’s a bad idea. She didn’t want to be seen. She doesn’t want to small talk.  

But then Jesus tells her she should be asking him for a drink. And at this point, she’s probably thinking this guy’s crazy. “Sir, I don’t know if you know how wells work, but you didn’t even come here with a bucket. Why would I ask you for water? You know what, humor me for a minute. Our forefather Jacob founded this well. He’s supplied our people with sustainable drinking water for generations. I have lived off this water my entire life. Are you suggesting you have something better hidden around here? 

[13] – Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 

She doesn’t know it yet, but Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit. He says later in John 7: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive…

This is the living water Jesus came to bring. This is the gift of God that he wants to give her. The spring of life he wants to flow through her. 

Still not knowing what in the world this man is talking about she says, 15 …“Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” [16] Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”

What an odd thing for him to say. But remember, Jesus isn’t talking about physical water. He’s willing to have these surface-level conversations, but he ultimately wants to draw out the real matters of the heart. “Go, call your husband, and come here” is Jesus’s way of showing her, you’ve been drinking from the wrong well. 

2. Coming to Jesus is deeply personal.

Here is a woman who desperately desires to be wanted. She wants love. She wants security. But it’s sad because she’s still thirsty. Her pursuit of love has left her feeling unwanted and pushed to the margins. 

She keeps trekking up the same hills, talking to the same kinds of men, drawing the same kind of water, only to be left with the same feeling of emptiness. 

And we all have our wells. We all have those sources of water we drink from to give us identity and worth.

For some of us, it is relational love. It’s acceptance and approval. We believe the validation of another person is what will fulfill us. Whether it’s serving my family. Finding a spouse. Becoming a parent. Getting the approval of my parents. That motivation becomes the driving force of our lives. It’s what influences every major decision we make. We need that validation. 

For others, we drink from the well of wealth and success. So you’re achievement-oriented. You stress out over the pressures of a well-paying job, but it’s a means to an end. You gotta have the status and comfort that comes with it. You need the stuff to prove your worth.

Or maybe you drink from the well of power and influence. Power is the capacity to get what you want. You have to be the one who makes the decisions. You grab control in all your relationships. That’s what defines you. You take those roles away, you feel empty and unfulfilled. 

We all experience spiritual thirst. Every single of one us is drinking from a well we think will satisfy that inner thirst. 

That’s why Jesus shifts the conversation the way he does. He calls to attention her spiritual thirst. And she immediately deflects. I don’t have a husband. But Jesus is so gentle with her. 

He says, “You’re right. You’ve had 5 husbands, and you’re not technically married to the guy you live with now. That’s true.” He doesn’t say that to condemn her. He’s trying to draw her out. 

But isn’t it a little startling that Jesus can do this? That he can just draw out the most heart-pressing things in a moment? This was a woman who knew she was hiding, but even for those among us who look like they have their lives together. Jesus knows how to draw out what’s really in us. What’s really filling us. 

If you look again at v. 15, this woman wanted the living water Jesus was offering because she wanted to be free from all her hardship. She wanted to stop coming to this well. But Jesus gets deeply personal with her because he wants to heal her at the deepest levels of her heart. 

He’s saying to her, “If you really want this living water, stop going to drink from all these other wells.” What would Jesus tell you to go and get? It’s personal.

3. Your thirst can only be satisfied in Jesus.

We’re all spiritually thirsty. We’re all drawing water from some kind of well. But if you want to stop feeling that thirst, you should go drink from the well of living water. But see, the woman isn’t ready to go there yet. She deflects the conversation again. 

[19] – The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 

What an understatement! But now that her working definition of Jesus has shifted, she decides to dig into one of the biggest theological disagreements of the day. Where’s the right place to worship? The Jews say Jerusalem but the Samaritans say here. Who’s right? 

Which, BTW, theological debates can be really fun and lively, but so rarely do they actually cause someone to change. Usually, the theological argument is just a disguise that masks the deeper problem. “I don’t want to change.” “I don’t want to believe that.” “I don’t want to give this up.” But she’s picking a theological debate with God, so seems a little different. 

[21] – Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

Jesus doesn’t validate either form of worship. Instead, he says no longer will the worship of God be confined to one place. That’s why we’d say Christians don’t have to pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship God today. It would be an awesome place to visit under different circumstances, but it’s not essential to our faith and practice because Jesus changes that. How?

Here’s how: Jesus says instead of you coming to God, God has come to you. You don’t need a physical building to have a relationship with God because Jesus is the new temple. And he’s come to dwell in you. 

Jesus mentions a couple of times about his hour coming. Any time in the gospel of John when Jesus mentions the hour he’s talking about the Cross. Jesus is revealing himself as the Messiah who’s come to take away the sins of the world. His body will be the place where the payment for our sin is satisfied once for all. 

Let’s remember, this whole conversation started because Jesus was weary and thirsty and he came to this woman who was completely in the dark about him. But it ends with the woman realizing that she’s the one who’s weary and thirsty, but Jesus has brought her into the light. He’s revealed the truth about himself to her, and with it, you start to see her trust shift. 

She doesn’t need to drink from another well again. She’s been given the gift of God in Jesus Christ and that changes everything. 

4. True worshipers point other thirsty people to living water. 

People who worship God worship in spirit and truth. Meaning – only those who have been born again of the Holy Spirit and who respond in faith to Jesus’s saving power are true worshipers. 

At the high point of the whole conversation, Jesus reveals that he is the Messiah. But then there’s an abrupt end. The disciples show up. They’re surprised to find Jesus talking with a Samaritan woman. She runs off. The end, right? But watch this: 

[28] –  So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.

How do we know if someone is a true worshiper of God? How do you know if you’ve received this living water? Just look at her response. 

First, she stops drinking from other wells. It may be symbolic but it still feels significant. She left her water jar. People who thirst need a bucket to keep drawing from the well, but those who have their thirst quenched don’t need buckets anymore. You abandon your bucket. You stop going to the other wells for your source of life. 

Second, she has a new identity in Christ. She came to the well in the heat of the day because she didn’t want to be seen. But in Christ, she’s no longer bound by cultural constraints. She’s modeling a Christian response to life with God. 

She’s no longer defined by the sins of her past. She’s not even defined by the sins in her present. Her living situation hasn’t changed. She didn’t call up the man she was living with and end things. 

But look, she’s now defined by the one who came for her. She was unwanted and unloved. But Jesus says I wanted you. I came for you. And when she becomes defined by the love of her Savior she doesn’t have to hide behind the old identities and insecurities. She’s free to minister to the people she once avoided. 

She’s been changed. The One who loves her soul has broken the chains of sin and shame and given her a new identity. 

When we receive the gift of God, it’s like a river of water flowing through us. The Spirit of God works in us, convicting us of the truth about God. It changes us to the core. 

Third, she lives on mission. She goes to tell other thirsty people where to find living water. 

You can follow the pattern here. Encountering Jesus is a come-and-see kind of thing. You have to COME AND SEE him for yourself. That’s what I’ve been trying to show you this morning. But once you see for yourself who Jesus is and what he’s come to do for you, your whole life pivots to GO AND TELL. 

She doesn’t go into the town with all her theological questions settled. Instead, she leads with her own story. She says, “Come and see this guy who really saw me. I used to be ashamed, but he took the sting away. I’ve never felt a love like this before. Could this be the Christ?” Doesn’t every follower of Jesus have a story like that? 

And look, she’s not worried about what they think. She’s encountered the Christ. She knows that what Jesus did for her he desires to do for them. And what he did for them, he desires to do for you.

What keeps you from receiving this living water? 

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